“I say, old dear, you push it to me and I’ll push it to you—­softly, though, chappy, softly.”  And with that he flung himself upon the ball and hurled it full upon my nose, completely demolishing it.  Now I have always been a little partial to my nose.  My eyes, I’ll admit, are not quite as soulful as those liquid orbs of Francis X. Bushman’s, but my nose has been frequently admired and envied in the best drawing rooms in New York.  But it won’t be envied any more, I fear—­pitied rather.

Of course I played the game no more.  I was nauseated by pain and the sight of blood.  My would-be assassin was actually forced to sit down, he was so weak from brutal laughter.  I wonder if I can ever be an Ensign with a nose like this?

[Illustration:  “OF COURSE I PLAYED THE GAME NO MORE”]

April 7th. On the way back from a little outing the other day my companion, Tim, who in civil life had been a barkeeper and a good one at that, ingratiated himself in the good graces of a passing automobile party and we consequently were asked in.  There were two girls, sisters, I fancy, and a father and mother aboard.

“And where do you come from, young gentlemen?” asked the old man.

“Me pal comes from San Diego,” pipes up my unscrupulous friend, “and my home town is San Francisco.”

I knew for a fact that he had never been farther from home than the Polo Grounds, and as for me I had only the sketchiest idea of where my home town was supposed to be.

“Ah, Westerners!” exclaimed the old lady.  “I come from the West myself.  My family goes back there every year.”

“Yes,” chimed in the girls, “we just love San Diego!”

“In what section of the town did you live?” asked the gentleman, and my friend whom I was inwardly cursing, seeing my perplexity, quickly put in for me: 

“Oh, you would never know it, sir,” and then lowering his voice in a confidential way, he added, “he kept a barroom in the Mexican part of the town.”

“A barroom!” exclaimed the old lady.  “Fancy that!” She looked at me with great, innocent interest.

“Yes,” continued this lost soul, “my father, who is a State senator, sent him to boarding school and tried to do everything for him, but he drifted back into the old life just as soon as he could.  It gets a hold on them, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” said the old lady, sadly, “my cook had a son that went the same way.”

“He isn’t really vicious, though,” added my false friend with feigned loyalty—­“merely reckless.”

“Well, my poor boy,” put in the old gentleman with cheery consideration, “I am sure you must find that navy life does you a world of good—­regular hours, temperate living and all that.”

“Right you are, sport,” says I bitterly, assuming my enforced role, “I haven’t slit a Greaser’s throat since I enlisted.”

“We must all make sacrifices these days,” sighed the old lady.